DISD's on the right track with pre-K push

Dallas leaders may at times come across as a group of unruly first-graders fighting over the last carton of milk. But they’re also capable of doing something smart and commonsensical, such as the massive push to enroll more students in pre-K.

This is one of the most viable and critical initiatives to come down the pike in a long time.

It’s also a no-brainer, particularly given the massive demographic shift that has taken root in Dallas over the past quarter-century.

The district largely comprises Latino and black kids who qualify for free or reduced lunch. The socioeconomic disparity creates an early learning gap, which effectively handicaps many students who simply can never catch up or keep pace.

So, they slip further behind.

That is a message that Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and education leaders are trying to hammer home this week as the Dallas Independent School District launches its first collective open enrollment week for pre-K classes.

There’s a lot at stake here, folks.

In some ways, Rawlings & Co. have their work cut out for them because neither pre-K nor kindergarten is mandatory in Texas, as my colleague, Tawnell Hobbs, pointed out in a story detailing the plan.

So kids end up in a variety of places, from personal caregivers to private day care centers and Head Start programs.

What school officials have come to realize, however, is that too many of these students are ill-equipped for kindergarten.

Plenty of research shows how problematic that can be for years to come. It’s an especially acute pain among the poor.

Even contrarian thinkers such as Bruce Fuller, author of Standardized Childhood and a professor of education and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, is of the mind that good, readily accessible preschool programs can benefit poor children.

“Poor youngsters enter kindergarten already four to six months behind their middle-class peers in oral language and pre-literacy skills,” Fuller wrote in a recent Washington Post op-ed column.

That’s exactly the group Dallas officials are targeting — those with limited English proficiency and few financial resources.

Again, it’s a wise strategic move by DISD, which also has hired an executive director for a newly created office focused on kids from birth to pre-K.

Oh, brother.

I know some of you already are cringing at the thought of another layer of bureaucracy. But in this case, putting someone in charge sends the right message.

Dallas, historically, seems to take one step forward and two steps back in its never-ending campaign to close the learning gap and make its public schools better.

In recent years, it has focused on curbing the dropout rate, closing the performance gap between minority and Anglo students, raising standardized test scores, etc.

The slow and uneven progress has been so frustrating that the mayor and other civic leaders are toying with the idea of turning DISD into a home-rule district.

Everybody’s searching for answers. At least this one — focusing on pre-K — was easy to spot.

Several major cities, from San Antonio to New York, are expanding pre-K programs. And President Barack Obama is pushing for quality pre-K programs for all students.

Again, not everyone endorses the idea of Big Government providing across-the-board preschool programs for all kids.

“Public schools will continue to reinforce inequality and harden achievement gaps until gross disparities in children’s early development are narrowed,” Fuller said in his op-ed piece.

But he said “we must avoid squandering scarce dollars” on the kids of “well-off parents” to score political points.

“The rekindled push to expand preschool is welcome,” Fuller wrote. “But unless public dollars are focused on high-quality programs for poor families — while bolstering the neighborhood organizations that serve them — good intentions will turn into dashed hopes.”

We’ve had our fair share of dashed hopes around here. So the pre-K push needs to be on the mark.

“We realize that we dug ourselves into a major hole over the last few decades, and we’ve got to make the kids prepared for school,” Rawlings said last week. “We’ve got to have a sense of urgency, but it’s got to be done right.”

James Ragland writes on race and culture, education, social services and public health. Follow him on Twitter at @jamesragland61 and on Facebook at facebook.com/JamesRagland61.

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